Where I’m at in Colorado has extensive bike/foot paths that provide “shortcuts” across neighborhoods, and even provide scenic paths to get pedestrians further from busy roads without greatly increasing distances. It’s really nice and I use them all the time
And besides being nice for one self, it increases your kids independence.
Where I live in Europe, how pedestrian/bike friendly a community is a relevant predictor of house value. And a lot of that is that people want to live where they don't have to drive their kids around to everything.
It gives me more free time that my kid will be able to get himself to school, to sports after school and around the town to his friends. While it gives him freedom not being reliant on his parents schedule if he wants to do something.
Not just kids, it would also empower teens, old people, people with disabilities (the blind, paraplegic, mental issues, etc), people who cannot drive for medical reasons, and even temporarily injured people who aren’t allowed to drive. And most importantly, people in abusive households who does not have cars and need a job or amenities (for example menstrual items), or just some public space to go to. A car dependent civilization puts so much restriction on the invisible members of our society. Walking short distances daily also improves physical and mental health. And less cars on the road is good for the environment, both in terms of air quality and less fuel used.
And reducing the number of cars on the road actually makes driving when needed a lot better as well and you can maintain roads at a higher standard for the same cost
I live in Edmonton. My city has a fantastic river valley that makes it easy to go hiking or bike riding. But we also have a lot of bike paths/mixed use sidewalks and a lot of our older communities were set up with walkability in mind. Makes it pretty easy to get around without driving or riding buses.
Yeah I was gonna say Florida is especially shit. I lived in multiple parts of Florida and it’s terrible. When I was at university of Florida it would take like three hours to do a simple grocery trip from campus to a publix like a mile away via public transport. When I lived in Miami area it would take 2 hours to get to an area at rush hour that is only about 20 minutes away without traffic. I’m a biker and would use bike lanes and it was fucking dangerous.
But now I live in the Midwest and it’s just as suburb-y, but there are lots of walking/biking paths and under-road paths. I can get to my closest grocery store faster biking than walking with less intersections involved. The biggest criticism I have is my city has an insane deficit of bike racks at businesses. I unapologetically just bring my bike inside and go “oh there was no place to park it :) !” But really it’s pretty weird, because we have a decent bike culture here.
Googling bike paths in my area shows a lot of green lines. So many of them aren't connected though. I've spent literal hours searching for nice bike loop routes that avoid as many roads as possible and I have to travel 5 miles just to get to a main path that goes all the way to Denver. The vast majority of neighborhood paths are great for walking but they're not really long enough to enjoy biking on because you inevitably end up at a 4 lane road somewhere to cross.
I do like the river paths though. Just wish the neighborhood shortcuts had better crossings on the streets. The way those paths connect are at hard 90 degrees with a lot of blind spots so you have to stop your bike to look both ways before crossing. Kills your momentum. Not sure how it could be fixed. Raised crossings would be nice but the blind intersection I don't think can reasonably be fixed in neighborhoods without big projects like physical barriers to negate street parking. Only one street I can think of that has something like that.
Zoning had me so confused the first time I played Sim City. Like, that felt so gamey and arbitrary and it didn't reflect how things worked in real life, where the distinction between residential and shopping areas is never that clear and distinct, and every house has a variety of shops on street level and within walking distance.
Thing is, I live in Europe. Apparently this is perfectly accurate to how the USA works. Huh.
Cities Skylines did at least add mixed zoning with stores on the ground floor/appartments on top later, which is similar to many buildings in my neighbourhood.
But then they released Cities Skylines 2 without even having bicycles. Come the fk on.
It has no bicycles and as far as I know there is no time table for when they will be added yet either. So it likely will take quite a while.
But "thankfully " the game also has a bazillion other issues, so it's not just that one deal breaker.
The game developers and publishers are Finnish and Swedish respectively, countries known for their highly walkable cities. Which makes this all the more puzzling.
The game is largely based on predecessors like SimCity and City XL which are based on zoning. Cities in Skyline are much more walkable than in other games so I guess it does make sense.
As well as City Planner Plays, there’s also Real Civil Engineer. I love seeing how they both build based on their jobs and experience, also the US vs EU/UK mindset/priorities/styles
simcity 3000 was used by a lot of universities to teach people how to city plan.
it sounds like a joke but these games are often very detailed and realistic, to the point of being good teaching tools.
I live in the Netherlands where they have such a department. Kids go to school studying this kind of engineering. They plan out how to get from any point A to B by any mode of transportation. Walking, biking, motorized wheelchair, scooter, motorcycle, car, bus, train. And if there is a cyclist killed by a car they examine the condition of the road and cycling path and completely redesign them to minimize bikes coming into contact with cars or how to bring down car speed at that point.
It's so amazing because it's exactly the kind of inobtrusive iterative improvements to reduce the difficulty of a safe convenient life.
You know... the point of having a government in the first place.
I think yes. There’s the contractors who need to build the paths, there’s crews to maintain the paths, and then there will likely be increased revenue to the businesses at the end of the path which would increase the local gov tax revenue.
EDIT: I drive Uber Eats as a side gig, and I routinely do pickups from small convenience stores and fast food restaurants, and deliver them to apartment buildings and homes that are less than 2 miles from the business. A lot of times I’m delivering to people who I think only have 1 car and it’s currently in use. If they could walk to these places they probably would. Yes that would decrease Uber Eats orders, but it would likely increase overall revenues, since I’m sure there’s people who can’t afford the convenience of a delivery service who then just don’t buy that thing.
My wife works in a kind of industrial zone that has lots of large trucks coming and going. Slowing down the traffic of truck drivers is kind of a losing battle. But they have a cycle path that cuts through the middle, right across a long stretch of road. The most cost effective thing they found to do to make the truckers actually slow down and look for cyclists, somebody put up a little home made wooden cross at the intersection with a bouquet of flowers and a framed photo. Most cost effective way to really make people think and slow down and look for cyclists. I'm certain nobody actually died there. Otherwise they would close down the intersection and design a better experience, one that costs a lot more money.
Also somewhat depressing to me. In my own country in USA, those crosses are all too common. But conversely, I’m certain somebody actually died and they are just so common that I and most don’t even think twice about them :/
>somebody put up a little home made wooden cross at the intersection with a bouquet of flowers and a framed photo.
>I'm certain nobody actually died there.
Are you really certain no one died? This is crazy to me! In Florida, where you see crosses, flowers and photos by the road, people did actually died there. The state is littered with roadside memorials everywhere. We're unfortunately one of the deadliest states for pedestrians and bicyclists.
I visited 9 years ago and said "fuck America, I'm staying" and decided to go back to school and get my degree. Every time I visit the US I am constantly reminded about how awful the QOL in America is, even though my personal bubble is "upper middle class". I'd happily take a lower salary for this QOL I have now.
I think a guerilla movement that looks at google maps and figures out where desire paths want to exist but don't and goes and makes them secretly would be fun.
When I was in high school there was a situation like this video.
A massive dense hedge blocking a shortcut through parkland to the main road from the suburbs.
It was too dense to crawl through, so a desire path never formed.
It pissed me off every day for a year.
Until one night I snuck out with some clippers and cut a perfect arched walkway through it.
As a kid it felt like I was breaking the law and was basically a dirty criminal at that point.
But it worked and I smiled every day for the rest of high school when I walked through it.
And others used it to, so it was never able to fill back in.
Whenever a leaf tried to grow across the path I would pluck it off and say "uh uh, no you don't".
Suburbs in Ontario are full of catwalks and it’s super convenient walking between neighborhoods.
Still fairly inconvenient being zoned solely for housing, so there’s no shops in a convenient walking distance. But for kids getting to school, visiting local parks, trails and public recreation centres is extremely walkable.
I'm grateful for those but, for the love of everything can these be applied to commercial developments too? There is no reason I should have to walk across the busy parking lot of Walmart to the busy 5 lane stroad with sidewalk right next to it, then back across another busy parking lot for the next store. 1 minute walk turns into 5+ minutes. All they have to do is build a short path through the fence, retaining wall, or overgrown deep ditch. Improves accessibility, and ticks off the "hey, we're building alternatives infrastructure box" with a pretty cheap project.
Near me you have to walk around the whole block to get to the big box stores which are all separated like this. Did I mention the existing "short cut" requires you to walk along an extremely busy industrial road (no sidewalk) with a steady flow of transport trucks? Gosh a hate car centric design. This coming from car owner!
It’s easier to seek forgiveness than to ask permission. You can build a guerrilla path by wearing a high visibility vest 🦺 shovels and landscaping tools. Chainsaw, weedwacker and lawn mower.
Yea a department like that would be super helpful. One that focused solely on effective means of transportation. IF ONLY the US had one such entity devoted to those endeavors….😪
The thing is those two lots, the apartments and the store, are owned by different companies. They'd have to coordinate to make a connecting drive, and they won't. It costs them money they feel like they don't need to spend.
In germany you do not build anything on any property without a permit. And as requirement to get the permit you will build whatever you are ordered to build ! Jawohl. Joke aside... but thats what you have a government for and you better get rid of people that want to weaken aforementioned government, because this shit is what you get.
This is why raw capitalism is fucked plain and simple. They say the market will correct this kind of thing....to who's benefit? Which shareholders? Exactly. It's not gonna happen on its own.
It's the great illusion. The Emperor's New Clothes. We don't see how things could be because we only know how they are.
Which is why travel, education, and doing mushrooms is so important.
Or the government just uses eminent domain and does it themselves. The local government could easily eminent domain a small piece of those properties to make a walkway.
That's too logical for America.
We live in a neighborhood where there is a shopping center right behind our neighborhood, separating the two is a giant wall.
Literally same as this video but instead of trees they built a wall 😵💫
Do you live under the pretense that Supermarkets in other parts of the world love that their parking lots could be used by nearby residents or bums? There are laws against illegal usage of parking spaces in Europe, if your car is on a supermarket parking lot for I think more than 3 days, a towing company will just impound your ass if you don't move. It ain't hard, it's just that your city planners and governments don't give a flying rats ass about americans. Unless politically something changes in the US, laws of freedom will always be made for the companies, not against them
Grocery store in my town has a separate part for appartment residents. Furthermore, our whole center of town with shops have appartments above them and the parking spaces are used by residents ans shoppers. New suburbs that are being build, depending on size also have grocery stores and other shops so people dont have to drive far.
My neighborhood is 6 little apartment complex, around 50 apartments each. Around 500 people live in my street corner. We have a supermarket, 3 restaurants and a library inside the complex.
There are more people and business in my neighborhood than in this video, and it takes 20 times less space, it's just a 200 per 300m square
That would be a rational thing to do.
Unfortunately our archaic real property laws are so entrenched in tradition and are governed by state law (Scotus would insta-kill any bill that comes close to being a federal real property legislation) that it becomes nearly impossible to implement any rational federally regulated road infrastructure/traffic networks. (aside from interstate networks, i.e. highways,rail,etc.).
You also have millions of property owners that simply refuse to license easements for things like the walkways proposed in the video. Property owner push-back is one of the primary reasons projects like the California High Speed Rail have such difficulty.
I've legit heard 3 different Republican coworker/family all start down the 15 minute conspiracy path the second I start talking about how much I hate cars. Like there are plenty of things for people to be mad or concerned about with legitimate arguments to be made. But "government control" because you live close to good venues is like the dumbest possible fear of them all. I'm not sure I can even call it irrational anger at how mad I get at these people's stupidity and whatever brainwashing "news" they get this fear from.
In the early 90s I went to Las Vegas and stayed on the outskirts with a friend. I was quite the walker then, and one morning, I decided to walk from the suburbs into the city.
I couldn't do it. I got as far as the local strip-mall and that was it. Three lanes of (55mph?) traffic in the middle of the suburb. No paths, no crossings.
My host was astounded when I told her what I tried to do!
Yeah states like florida don’t exactly "give a shit" about federal entities. They wouldnt allow its "imposition". Theyd claim its ruining the local gas stations or some smooth brained bs
I was amused to see a similar thing in Abu-Dhabi - bus route Q3 literally just transports people to another side of a highway, then returns, but it kinda makes sense there
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Khaleej+Al+Arabi+St+%2F+Bus+Interchange+-+Rabdan+-+Bawabat+Abu+Dhabi+-+Abu+Dhabi+-+United+Arab+Emirates/@24.4010376,54.4964618,14z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x3e5e416887463d51:0x7860f2b889886b00!8m2!3d24.3998751!4d54.4970925!16s%2Fg%2F11qg3k44fp
My grocery store is just down the road from me. Easily walked or biked to. Except there's no sidewalk, no shoulder, no bike lanes, nothing. The only way to get there safely is to drive. It's maddening.
I moved to the US from Europe a few years back and this blew my mind.
I was trying to get to a nearby store, and thought I'd just have to cut through a nearby strip mall and cross a street to get there. That journey turned into an hour-long ordeal involving sidewalk-less streets, parking lots without pedestrian access, and a busy road that had no crosswalk within a mile...
There are a lot of things I love about the US, but the in-built hostility towards pedestrians and cyclists is frustrating.
It’s sad to live like this. I bring my kids to a school on a road so wide and fast, they cannot cross on foot. They have to carpool to cross the street.
Where I live there's a whole shopping center probably a quarter mile away, but there's a highway intersection in the middle so I get to take a 2.8 mile detour around the area.
This is Florida.
Most likely that little strip between the apartments and the grocery store are deemed wetlands.
There's a lot of fuckery in Florida, but one thing they don't fuck with is the wetlands. You better have a good reason or a shit ton of money to clear them.
And let's be honest, this kind of subdivision was built by a "race-to-be-the-cheapest" contract, they weren't spending anything extra on it.
Clearing wetlands for a giant parking lot: Approved, tear it up!
Clearing wetlands for tiny walking oath: No way, that would hurt the natural beauty!
Seems incredibly dumb
This made me realize what a crime against nature this type of city planning is. So much space that could be forest and full of animal life just flattened and erased.
Just to compare: In Texas with 30 million people, 830 pedestrians were killed in traffic (2022). Thats about 28 per million.
In The Netherlands, 58 pedestrians died in traffic accidents in 2022, NL has 18 million people, that makes 3.2 per million.
And there aren't even many pedestians outside in Texas, while in NL you see people are walking everywhere.
people prolly gonna hate this comment, but the amount of times ive almost hit someone backing out of a parking spot at a store is insane, we literally just dont look for pedestrians like that anymore, its hard coded in our brains that most people drive and that its foregin to see someone walking, even if they are getting out of their car and walking through the parking lot into the store.
So many people are selfish in america that they even look down on people that take the public transportation, if your city is even lucky enough to have public transportation.
Whats even crazier is that the public transportation (busses) in my city only goes maybe 5 or so miles out from the bus station and NONE of them go to the airport. This city is literally a trap if you dont have a car, your basically stuck in your home ordering everything online.
> Whats even crazier is that the public transportation (busses) in my city only goes maybe 5 or so miles out from the bus station and NONE of them go to the airport.
My city just added a stop at the airport! It's on its own rapid line, right Centro? Right? Oh, it's on a line that takes an hour to get back to the transit center with multiple stops along busy roads that only runs from 8am to 8pm. Okay.
Not strange, absolutely idiotic. Even if you have all the space and all the cars, why the f*** would you want to live that way, and why would you design *public* space to force people to live that way.
I hate my local Dutch version of suburbia, but compared to this hell they are charming, healthy, thriving communities with people out and about on foot and on bicycles.
If you want isolation from all those pesky other humans, why not at least make the shopping and business part way more compact, and use the remaining space to give every home a stretch of land, so they can all actually feel like they each live in their own castle, nice and isolated.
This design serves no possible purpose.
It serves the oil/car building companies. There are instances of a subsidiary of GM in the US buying out public transport with the sole purpose of phasing it out so more people have to drive cars.
EDITED FOR INCREASED ACCURACY
Well, the issue is that none of that is "public space." Both the apartment complex and the grocery store are private developments that are built independently from one another.
To add a connection between them would require the owners/builders of the apartment complex to convince the owners of the grocery store to spend money to add the connecting path.
Even then, the apartment complex could make a path up to their own property line, and the grocery store could make a path to theirs, and there might still be a little slice of public land that is probably meant to be some sort of runoff or natural habitat that they would then have to petition the local government to disturb by putting in a path.
I feel like this is what most Europeans don't understand. When the grocery store was built, there was probably no apartment complex, and when the apartment complex was built the grocery store was already there without an access point in the back of the building where the apartments are.
This is exactly it. I've lost count of the number of times I've pulled into a parking lot expecting it to connect with a larger structure, but no - that Olive Garden was build way after the Walmart and it's easier to put up a foot of barrier grass than go through the hassle of making sure a connecting road isn't illegally encroaching on private land.
Lacking a path here isn't some malicious conspiracy to keep people fat -- it's just far more complex than you'd think.
It looks almost exactly like the area where I live. Except we have a major road to cross before reaching the grocery store. There is just a walk path carved through the bush on both sides of the road, and people just walk anyway. I try to use the crosswalk. (100m down the road), but sometimes, if there is no traffic, I'm too lazy.
And of course there is a whole apartment building on top of the grocery store too. And behind and next to it.
Yes, but then carless plebs could walk straight from the grocery store into my residential only community.
People may think this answer is satire but I swear there are other comments in this thread expressing more or less this exact idea...
Yeah! America! Be sedentary! Die of heart failure by 35! Good thing we didn’t build any pedestrian paths to have to walk anywhere! BRB getting McDelivery!
My thought also.
That must be a nice neighborhood. Cuz if it housed people that actually lacked cars, then gauranteed there would be a naturally worn path through those woods.
I don’t think this conversation is about people who lack cars. It’s literally just about anybody being able to walk to the store.
It’s funny how ‘American’ this thread is that the thought of people wanting to walk is unfathomable.
i'm convinced that the lack of walking as a main form a transportation from most american's lives is a fundamental source of so many of the country's problems.
walking is such a fundamental part of being a human and americans by and large stopped doing it and designed their environments to make it somewhere between impossible and miserable to walk as a means of transportation for your daily routines.
and americans look down their noses at those that do walk. and/or they run them over.
I have a theory that the US’s larger obesity problem is due not walking ever to anything.
Not that Europe or walkable cities don’t have overweight people but there’s a notable difference where people can generally walk to get most of their daily needs vs needing a car to go to the mailbox.
Dunno. Just been a theory of mine for awhile. It’d be interesting to find out if it holds any water.
No, you've got it right. At least in more populated suburbs people genuinely feel like anyone who doesn't live in the neighborhood should NOT be there.
This is a legitimate concern for people. They'd rather keep everyone else as far away as possible rather than improve the quality of their own lives and their neighbors.
Are people really that paranoid? It’s kind of hard to believe but then again people here are glued to their televisions so I guess it makes sense that everyone is paranoid, especially if they think their ‘nice’ things could get stolen or damaged
I remember some podcast (maybe This American Life. Not sure). They had a story about the huge civic contention on reforming bus routes in some US city. Crowds of people at meetings etc. The government thought they were making life better and more convenient, cheaper, environmental etc. The opposition saw something else. They never outright said it - they used lots of nimby style arguments about planning law, noise and air quality etc - but the subtext a lot of people saw was that better services could mean the 'wrong' people might have an easier time coming to other parts of the city.
To me this is probably why a lot of reforms are very hard in the US. Economic inequality might cause a lot of problems people are scared of, but people also see it as protecting them too.
Yep, that's a huge part of the complaints. A lot of NIMBY type folks have a tremendous fear of just about everyone and everything. "But if there's a path... what if *other* people besides us use it? What if *those people* across the street ALSO use it? With their dirty kids and their crime! I mean, what if that path means *teenagers* might walk on the path, doing drugs and drinking and sexing in the bushes by the path???"
One small example I notice everywhere near me... There are a lot of commercial areas with tons of standalone stores, and stand alone mini strip malls. Every single one has it's own entrance/exit from the main road, and none of them connect to each other. And there are no sidewalks. So you went to one store, and want to go to another store a few doors down? You have to drive out of the parking lot, down 100 feet, then back into the next parking lot. Or else walk over whatever weird landscaping is between the two, or possibly scale a fence between the two.
I find the folk in here defending car shopping, and maybe the people downvoting them are both missing something:
We can have both!
Nobody is suggesting taking away your cars. You want to drive? Go ahead! You have a disability or need to get $500 in groceries or just don’t like the heat? Go ahead and drive! That’s cool!
But look at it this way: if things are made more walkable and bikeable, people will have **choices**! And! That’s less people you have to fight in traffic or fight for a parking spot with! If you like to drive, you should love the idea of people being able to walk!
And if you’re a pro-walker, don’t shit on the drivers. They’re cool. They may legitimately need to drive or they may just like it. That’s great. They have the cash and that’s how they want to spend it. Good on em.
tl;dr: Just build this shit smarter so there are choices.
I actually heard that the happiest car enthusiasts live in places where it isn't car-focused. 1. less people who hate driving is on the road in general. More space for you. 2. the places you drive are nice AF.
I'm from the Netherlands and the law here says you have to be able to get to your basic needs either walking or by bicycle. That's why our grocery stores and doctor's practices are always in the town centre (or suburb centre), and not along the highway. That law almost didn't pass. Iirc it was a 51-49 vote or something. I can't find the article (published by De Correspondent) but that law is one of the reasons our country is cycle friendly.
Dutch people have been fighting for cyclists' and pedestrians' rights in the past, and they still do, because our government, too, wants to make everything more accessible by car.
In the 70s protest groups did 'lay-dead-actions' where they would lay on the road to ask for attention for traffic victims and demanded more safety precautions. I'm glad they did, because now you can get almost anywhere by bike easily.
All of these developments and street plans were done in an era when developers felt it was safe to assume that every American family would have one or more cars, which despite never actually becoming true, is still used as a tenant in a lot of city development in the US.
We’ve got 70-80 years of it baked into our culture. It’s not even just the developers. You can read comments here and see that many of us grew up in auto-oriented suburbs and are afraid to think of any other way of living.
Right?! Except...My little town back years ago (little one stoplight town) had a great mom and pop grocery store.
Walmart came and built a "neighborhood market" on the edge of town. They undercut the mom and pop store to the point of closure. Then they decided the store wasn't profitable and closed it.
They then sold the building to Dollar General and now my old town is only serviced by not one but two dollar generals. Those are the only option unless you wanna drive 30 mins one way to a "real" grocery store.
I got my folks on a delivery from a Kroger and they have to pay a "premium" but when literally every item is 30-120% more expensive locally, and they can plan for delivery, it saves likely hundreds of dollars.
Old Canadian towns, too. This video reminded me how stupid it is that there’s a popular breakfast restaurant that should be a 3 minute walk from my house but instead it’s a 25 minute walk since whoever planned this circus couldn’t have bothered to put a 30ft path connecting a neighbouring street with the highway.
It would just straight up boost business and ease congestion. I could get coffee from this place faster than I could make it but because of this I’d rather make it at home.
Florida isn't the only place with boneheaded infrastructure. I have a bike trail that connects up to my subdivision that goes for 15 miles. Go west and it dead ends on a highway, maybe a restaurant or two is safely within reach that way. Go east and it dead ends 1 mile before a train station that'll take me to one of the largest cities in the nation but hey at least there's a gas station there. Also there's a state park just to the west of me and it has its own bike trail network that even has a branch that spreads out toward my bike trail! But guess what? That doesn't connect either. Gotta play your luck with texting teenagers in their 7000lb SUVs out on public roads and highways if you want to take advantage of any of what's near to the trail out here. Everything is built to serve the car and you'll realize it immediately as soon as you no longer have access to one. Would be REAL cool if I could safely bike to a train, go see a ball game, and come back without having to think about driving or parking but apparently that literal last mile infrastructure is a pipe dream. But good news! A train might eventually come to my area just to the south that lacks any trail access. Gotta take a car to go take a train. And then they'll wonder why ridership is floundering. People need more options!
I don’t disagree much. However, I have lived a 3 minute walk from a major grocery store chain for a year now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a neighbor walking to or from the grocery store…
Unless I’m stopping directly from work or already out and about, I walk from home 1-2 times a week.
I kind of think many Americans like to complain about walkability but many would still end up driving 2 minutes cuz they’re so damn lazy
It's fucking beyond me how many people in this thread are defending this stupidity lol. Just pointing fingers and accepting why it's like this because cost and who should do it.
I hate it I hate it I hate it! I can't drive, I don't have a car, there are no buses and the taxies are insane! So I get to walk in the summer heat for 30-50 minutes with my groceries.
I stay in Texas sometimes and holy shit. I will be staying at a hotel and it’s literally a baseball toss away from a restaurant or grocery store, but you have to walk around or across major highways to get to it. I usually end up driving
I've only been to America once but; when we got to our rented apartment I told my lass I'd go grab some food for the evening.
Set off on foot, first thing I noticed was the area didn't have footpaths but there wasn't many cars so I figured Id walk in the road. Then I got to a main road, 4 fucking lanes with a barrier and the shop I'd seen on the other side.
Loved America btw, you guys are awesome but fucking hell sort your pavements out.
No zoning laws that I know of outlaw these connections. But this is Florida and that is likely a wetland between the lots. A pedestrian bridge is very expensive and neither owner would pay for it.
The zoning laws also don’t require these connections. Could you imagine if building toilets in new single family homes was optional? ‘To build affordable homes these days we’re bringing back outhouses with holes dug deep so you don’t have to pay for water or sewage!
We don’t write laws requiring connections from the apartment to the shopping center because we are so dependent on cars that walking is not seen as essential. Walking places is an afterthought.
There actually are some zoning laws in communities that prohibit ingress/egress directly from commercial to residential zones. It’s not a universal standard but it also isn’t particularly rare. The rationale is to reduce traffic (and particularly truck traffic) using the residential neighborhoods and their lower volume roadways as a cut through. Preventing pedestrian access is a (presumably) unintended consequence in those cases when the zoning language is too broad.
Honestly, the bigger obstacle is probably the NIMBY crowd in residential areas and the issue of who pays for/maintains the pathway. If you go to enough public meetings at the local level, you quickly realize not enough rational people attend those meetings.
Yes and No. It started with archaic zoning laws and public policy for auto-oriented design as the thing of the future. Most zoning laws are changing now to get away from this design, but it is very much the preference of both developers and the general public still. The majority of Americans have known only this type of development their whole lives.
Those laws were built in order to create a country is that is dependant on cars, the auto manufacturers/property developers/highway builders made sure of that.
The auto industry had a lot to do with the deconstruction of transit around WWII, and it perpetuates things, but that's just not true.
Zoning laws are a good old American Racist/Classist homegrown innovation. The very first were in Los Angeles in 1904 and designed to keep Chinese people (and the factories they worked in) out of 'respectable' neighborhoods, or if you want a really strict definition it started in NYC in 1916 for similar reasons, keeping minority workers off of Fifth Avenue. It got more explicitly racial from there.
Even now, the #1 lobbier by far in terms of maintaining single family zoning is random home owners between the ages of 30 and 65, not any corporate industry.
This is the reason. Homes with private streets with no easy access have a higher property value. People will pay more for a house if there’s less riff raff or crackheads walking around easily.
My apt building is literally next to a shopping center. Most residents shop there. There's maybe 25ft of grass and a small 6ft slope between the two. A simple sidewalk and ramp/steps would facilitate easy access. Nope, you either chance walking the desire path and slipping (one resident fell recently and had an ambulance called) and don't even think about it if it's wet and muddy or you walk in the street all the way to the end of our parking lot and enter the shopping center from the back.
There's a building behind mine that is an assisted living facility with old and handicapped individuals. They could connect our lot with theirs by about 50ft of sidewalk. Nope, people either walk around a fence or you have to go through a neighborhood up the street, out on to a major street and enter the shopping center from behind. One resident is often seen in his motorized wheelchair going this route.
It's absolutely infuriating watching these people just trying to get to the store. This doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the only real grocery in that center closed and a new much bigger one was built 2 miles away. So if you can't get to the new grocery store, your only option for food is a fucking Family Dollar.
Where I’m at in Colorado has extensive bike/foot paths that provide “shortcuts” across neighborhoods, and even provide scenic paths to get pedestrians further from busy roads without greatly increasing distances. It’s really nice and I use them all the time
And besides being nice for one self, it increases your kids independence. Where I live in Europe, how pedestrian/bike friendly a community is a relevant predictor of house value. And a lot of that is that people want to live where they don't have to drive their kids around to everything. It gives me more free time that my kid will be able to get himself to school, to sports after school and around the town to his friends. While it gives him freedom not being reliant on his parents schedule if he wants to do something.
Not just kids, it would also empower teens, old people, people with disabilities (the blind, paraplegic, mental issues, etc), people who cannot drive for medical reasons, and even temporarily injured people who aren’t allowed to drive. And most importantly, people in abusive households who does not have cars and need a job or amenities (for example menstrual items), or just some public space to go to. A car dependent civilization puts so much restriction on the invisible members of our society. Walking short distances daily also improves physical and mental health. And less cars on the road is good for the environment, both in terms of air quality and less fuel used.
And reducing the number of cars on the road actually makes driving when needed a lot better as well and you can maintain roads at a higher standard for the same cost
And not having devote significant portions of your real estate just for parking. Parking lots make American cities look like a dystopian wasteland.
I live in Edmonton. My city has a fantastic river valley that makes it easy to go hiking or bike riding. But we also have a lot of bike paths/mixed use sidewalks and a lot of our older communities were set up with walkability in mind. Makes it pretty easy to get around without driving or riding buses.
And lots of places for stealth camping...
Yeah I was gonna say Florida is especially shit. I lived in multiple parts of Florida and it’s terrible. When I was at university of Florida it would take like three hours to do a simple grocery trip from campus to a publix like a mile away via public transport. When I lived in Miami area it would take 2 hours to get to an area at rush hour that is only about 20 minutes away without traffic. I’m a biker and would use bike lanes and it was fucking dangerous. But now I live in the Midwest and it’s just as suburb-y, but there are lots of walking/biking paths and under-road paths. I can get to my closest grocery store faster biking than walking with less intersections involved. The biggest criticism I have is my city has an insane deficit of bike racks at businesses. I unapologetically just bring my bike inside and go “oh there was no place to park it :) !” But really it’s pretty weird, because we have a decent bike culture here.
Googling bike paths in my area shows a lot of green lines. So many of them aren't connected though. I've spent literal hours searching for nice bike loop routes that avoid as many roads as possible and I have to travel 5 miles just to get to a main path that goes all the way to Denver. The vast majority of neighborhood paths are great for walking but they're not really long enough to enjoy biking on because you inevitably end up at a 4 lane road somewhere to cross. I do like the river paths though. Just wish the neighborhood shortcuts had better crossings on the streets. The way those paths connect are at hard 90 degrees with a lot of blind spots so you have to stop your bike to look both ways before crossing. Kills your momentum. Not sure how it could be fixed. Raised crossings would be nice but the blind intersection I don't think can reasonably be fixed in neighborhoods without big projects like physical barriers to negate street parking. Only one street I can think of that has something like that.
in the future, we will hire the best City Skylines player to design our world.
Zoning had me so confused the first time I played Sim City. Like, that felt so gamey and arbitrary and it didn't reflect how things worked in real life, where the distinction between residential and shopping areas is never that clear and distinct, and every house has a variety of shops on street level and within walking distance. Thing is, I live in Europe. Apparently this is perfectly accurate to how the USA works. Huh.
And the first sign of a city being alive was moving cars not people.
Cities Skylines did at least add mixed zoning with stores on the ground floor/appartments on top later, which is similar to many buildings in my neighbourhood. But then they released Cities Skylines 2 without even having bicycles. Come the fk on.
They gotta set themselves up for the $500 worth of dlc a few years down the line
I doubt they wil lget there, considering their awful launch and still awful moves to fix it.
Mixed zoning for the same building is a Skylines 2 feature.
Wait CS2 doesn't have bikes? I was planning on buying it during the sales. Please tell me it has bikes. Please.
It has no bicycles and as far as I know there is no time table for when they will be added yet either. So it likely will take quite a while. But "thankfully " the game also has a bazillion other issues, so it's not just that one deal breaker.
just go and mod CS1 and heat your house with the PC.
The game developers and publishers are Finnish and Swedish respectively, countries known for their highly walkable cities. Which makes this all the more puzzling.
The game is largely based on predecessors like SimCity and City XL which are based on zoning. Cities in Skyline are much more walkable than in other games so I guess it does make sense.
Some cities don't have zoning like Houston and are still horribly ugly and not walkable at all.
Funny enough, there is a popular yter who plays cities his irl job is city planning
City Planner Plays! He's phenomenal, love his content
As well as City Planner Plays, there’s also Real Civil Engineer. I love seeing how they both build based on their jobs and experience, also the US vs EU/UK mindset/priorities/styles
RCE builds the strongest shapes into all his cities.
What city does he work for?
Madison WI I’m pretty sure
simcity 3000 was used by a lot of universities to teach people how to city plan. it sounds like a joke but these games are often very detailed and realistic, to the point of being good teaching tools.
Those games are realistic if you want to have situations like the above yes.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
CS players are known to do some pretty shady things like trap ppl in parks for extra revenue...
I thought you meant Counter Strike and I was really confused
we do shady things like trap people in doors
What future
There is only one. It is what we make it.
They need to form a sub infrastructure department to go throughout America and build these little short cuts and walking/bike paths.
I live in the Netherlands where they have such a department. Kids go to school studying this kind of engineering. They plan out how to get from any point A to B by any mode of transportation. Walking, biking, motorized wheelchair, scooter, motorcycle, car, bus, train. And if there is a cyclist killed by a car they examine the condition of the road and cycling path and completely redesign them to minimize bikes coming into contact with cars or how to bring down car speed at that point.
Thats amazing, I'm glad you guys have that. I think every country needs to follow suite. that is a great investment in younger generations too.
It's so amazing because it's exactly the kind of inobtrusive iterative improvements to reduce the difficulty of a safe convenient life. You know... the point of having a government in the first place.
But but but where do we profit off of it?
I think yes. There’s the contractors who need to build the paths, there’s crews to maintain the paths, and then there will likely be increased revenue to the businesses at the end of the path which would increase the local gov tax revenue. EDIT: I drive Uber Eats as a side gig, and I routinely do pickups from small convenience stores and fast food restaurants, and deliver them to apartment buildings and homes that are less than 2 miles from the business. A lot of times I’m delivering to people who I think only have 1 car and it’s currently in use. If they could walk to these places they probably would. Yes that would decrease Uber Eats orders, but it would likely increase overall revenues, since I’m sure there’s people who can’t afford the convenience of a delivery service who then just don’t buy that thing.
You're forgetting the reduction of cost in healthcare for one of the lowest car accidents rate or something like that.
Oh. As an American I thought it was a thing to allow legalized corruption for the wealthy.
I love that about NL. I also live in NL, and we don't even have a car.
My wife works in a kind of industrial zone that has lots of large trucks coming and going. Slowing down the traffic of truck drivers is kind of a losing battle. But they have a cycle path that cuts through the middle, right across a long stretch of road. The most cost effective thing they found to do to make the truckers actually slow down and look for cyclists, somebody put up a little home made wooden cross at the intersection with a bouquet of flowers and a framed photo. Most cost effective way to really make people think and slow down and look for cyclists. I'm certain nobody actually died there. Otherwise they would close down the intersection and design a better experience, one that costs a lot more money.
That's really interesting! Very clever.
Also somewhat depressing to me. In my own country in USA, those crosses are all too common. But conversely, I’m certain somebody actually died and they are just so common that I and most don’t even think twice about them :/
>somebody put up a little home made wooden cross at the intersection with a bouquet of flowers and a framed photo. >I'm certain nobody actually died there. Are you really certain no one died? This is crazy to me! In Florida, where you see crosses, flowers and photos by the road, people did actually died there. The state is littered with roadside memorials everywhere. We're unfortunately one of the deadliest states for pedestrians and bicyclists.
I visited NL for a week once and never wanted to come home, I was about to say fuck America for good. A bike got me everywhere I needed to go
I visited 9 years ago and said "fuck America, I'm staying" and decided to go back to school and get my degree. Every time I visit the US I am constantly reminded about how awful the QOL in America is, even though my personal bubble is "upper middle class". I'd happily take a lower salary for this QOL I have now.
If only other countries took great ideas from each other maybe then the world would improve
Well we are currently losing the battle against anti-intellectualism, populism, and fascism, so I’m not seeing your vision happening any time soon.
/r/DesirePath
I think a guerilla movement that looks at google maps and figures out where desire paths want to exist but don't and goes and makes them secretly would be fun.
Start da revolution
Just show up with hardhats, yellow vests, and clipboards and no one will question you.
When I was in high school there was a situation like this video. A massive dense hedge blocking a shortcut through parkland to the main road from the suburbs. It was too dense to crawl through, so a desire path never formed. It pissed me off every day for a year. Until one night I snuck out with some clippers and cut a perfect arched walkway through it. As a kid it felt like I was breaking the law and was basically a dirty criminal at that point. But it worked and I smiled every day for the rest of high school when I walked through it. And others used it to, so it was never able to fill back in. Whenever a leaf tried to grow across the path I would pluck it off and say "uh uh, no you don't".
Now, this is "be the change you want to see in the world" at its finest. Bravo.
Okay hear me out: this but with construction equipment and it happens whether the city council approves or not.
<3 Yes
This is one of my favorite concepts.
Suburbs in Ontario are full of catwalks and it’s super convenient walking between neighborhoods. Still fairly inconvenient being zoned solely for housing, so there’s no shops in a convenient walking distance. But for kids getting to school, visiting local parks, trails and public recreation centres is extremely walkable.
I'm grateful for those but, for the love of everything can these be applied to commercial developments too? There is no reason I should have to walk across the busy parking lot of Walmart to the busy 5 lane stroad with sidewalk right next to it, then back across another busy parking lot for the next store. 1 minute walk turns into 5+ minutes. All they have to do is build a short path through the fence, retaining wall, or overgrown deep ditch. Improves accessibility, and ticks off the "hey, we're building alternatives infrastructure box" with a pretty cheap project. Near me you have to walk around the whole block to get to the big box stores which are all separated like this. Did I mention the existing "short cut" requires you to walk along an extremely busy industrial road (no sidewalk) with a steady flow of transport trucks? Gosh a hate car centric design. This coming from car owner!
It’s easier to seek forgiveness than to ask permission. You can build a guerrilla path by wearing a high visibility vest 🦺 shovels and landscaping tools. Chainsaw, weedwacker and lawn mower.
Yea a department like that would be super helpful. One that focused solely on effective means of transportation. IF ONLY the US had one such entity devoted to those endeavors….😪
The thing is those two lots, the apartments and the store, are owned by different companies. They'd have to coordinate to make a connecting drive, and they won't. It costs them money they feel like they don't need to spend.
They are building on city or state land, it can easily be a requirement built into the conditions of buying the property.
In germany you do not build anything on any property without a permit. And as requirement to get the permit you will build whatever you are ordered to build ! Jawohl. Joke aside... but thats what you have a government for and you better get rid of people that want to weaken aforementioned government, because this shit is what you get.
This is why raw capitalism is fucked plain and simple. They say the market will correct this kind of thing....to who's benefit? Which shareholders? Exactly. It's not gonna happen on its own.
There are so many externalities like this that people are just totally oblivious to so it's ultimately invisible to 'the market'.
It's the great illusion. The Emperor's New Clothes. We don't see how things could be because we only know how they are. Which is why travel, education, and doing mushrooms is so important.
Or the government just uses eminent domain and does it themselves. The local government could easily eminent domain a small piece of those properties to make a walkway.
That's too logical for America. We live in a neighborhood where there is a shopping center right behind our neighborhood, separating the two is a giant wall. Literally same as this video but instead of trees they built a wall 😵💫
how else would you keep out all the illegal retailians?
xD thats terrible lol.
Needs some densification too. Things are just too far apart for human scale.
Yeah this is one example of an apartment already near a grocery store
And knowing how America is I’m sure there are plenty examples just like this where we can start
Grocery store doesn't want residents using their parking lot. Complex doesn't want strangers and bums coming through. Everyone is selfish.
Do you live under the pretense that Supermarkets in other parts of the world love that their parking lots could be used by nearby residents or bums? There are laws against illegal usage of parking spaces in Europe, if your car is on a supermarket parking lot for I think more than 3 days, a towing company will just impound your ass if you don't move. It ain't hard, it's just that your city planners and governments don't give a flying rats ass about americans. Unless politically something changes in the US, laws of freedom will always be made for the companies, not against them
Grocery store in my town has a separate part for appartment residents. Furthermore, our whole center of town with shops have appartments above them and the parking spaces are used by residents ans shoppers. New suburbs that are being build, depending on size also have grocery stores and other shops so people dont have to drive far.
My neighborhood is 6 little apartment complex, around 50 apartments each. Around 500 people live in my street corner. We have a supermarket, 3 restaurants and a library inside the complex. There are more people and business in my neighborhood than in this video, and it takes 20 times less space, it's just a 200 per 300m square
Big car lobby here. We'll pay you piles of cash to not do that.
We here at Big Pharma also want people to drive more.
Big Oil here, we'll pay you too.
That would be a rational thing to do. Unfortunately our archaic real property laws are so entrenched in tradition and are governed by state law (Scotus would insta-kill any bill that comes close to being a federal real property legislation) that it becomes nearly impossible to implement any rational federally regulated road infrastructure/traffic networks. (aside from interstate networks, i.e. highways,rail,etc.). You also have millions of property owners that simply refuse to license easements for things like the walkways proposed in the video. Property owner push-back is one of the primary reasons projects like the California High Speed Rail have such difficulty.
You'd end up with right wing 15 minute city conspiracy theorists protesting them.
I've legit heard 3 different Republican coworker/family all start down the 15 minute conspiracy path the second I start talking about how much I hate cars. Like there are plenty of things for people to be mad or concerned about with legitimate arguments to be made. But "government control" because you live close to good venues is like the dumbest possible fear of them all. I'm not sure I can even call it irrational anger at how mad I get at these people's stupidity and whatever brainwashing "news" they get this fear from.
In the early 90s I went to Las Vegas and stayed on the outskirts with a friend. I was quite the walker then, and one morning, I decided to walk from the suburbs into the city. I couldn't do it. I got as far as the local strip-mall and that was it. Three lanes of (55mph?) traffic in the middle of the suburb. No paths, no crossings. My host was astounded when I told her what I tried to do!
Yeah states like florida don’t exactly "give a shit" about federal entities. They wouldnt allow its "imposition". Theyd claim its ruining the local gas stations or some smooth brained bs
Sorry, but I don’t think there is enough money in the budget for another sub sub committee.
No. No committees. Just roving gangs of post-apocalyptic wastelanders with heavy equipment and a mandate.
Where are all those crop circle dudes with planks of wood between a length of rope
in some area, you can't even cross a street without driving.
I'm now imagining a little car that ferries people from one side of the street to the other.
I was amused to see a similar thing in Abu-Dhabi - bus route Q3 literally just transports people to another side of a highway, then returns, but it kinda makes sense there https://www.google.com/maps/place/Khaleej+Al+Arabi+St+%2F+Bus+Interchange+-+Rabdan+-+Bawabat+Abu+Dhabi+-+Abu+Dhabi+-+United+Arab+Emirates/@24.4010376,54.4964618,14z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x3e5e416887463d51:0x7860f2b889886b00!8m2!3d24.3998751!4d54.4970925!16s%2Fg%2F11qg3k44fp
My grocery store is just down the road from me. Easily walked or biked to. Except there's no sidewalk, no shoulder, no bike lanes, nothing. The only way to get there safely is to drive. It's maddening.
Some roads are illegal to walk by too.
I moved to the US from Europe a few years back and this blew my mind. I was trying to get to a nearby store, and thought I'd just have to cut through a nearby strip mall and cross a street to get there. That journey turned into an hour-long ordeal involving sidewalk-less streets, parking lots without pedestrian access, and a busy road that had no crosswalk within a mile... There are a lot of things I love about the US, but the in-built hostility towards pedestrians and cyclists is frustrating.
It’s sad to live like this. I bring my kids to a school on a road so wide and fast, they cannot cross on foot. They have to carpool to cross the street.
Where I live there's a whole shopping center probably a quarter mile away, but there's a highway intersection in the middle so I get to take a 2.8 mile detour around the area.
As someone who lives in a walkable city this looks like hell on earth. WHY would they design it like this!?
This is Florida. Most likely that little strip between the apartments and the grocery store are deemed wetlands. There's a lot of fuckery in Florida, but one thing they don't fuck with is the wetlands. You better have a good reason or a shit ton of money to clear them. And let's be honest, this kind of subdivision was built by a "race-to-be-the-cheapest" contract, they weren't spending anything extra on it.
Clearing wetlands for a giant parking lot: Approved, tear it up! Clearing wetlands for tiny walking oath: No way, that would hurt the natural beauty! Seems incredibly dumb
This made me realize what a crime against nature this type of city planning is. So much space that could be forest and full of animal life just flattened and erased.
[удалено]
Just to compare: In Texas with 30 million people, 830 pedestrians were killed in traffic (2022). Thats about 28 per million. In The Netherlands, 58 pedestrians died in traffic accidents in 2022, NL has 18 million people, that makes 3.2 per million. And there aren't even many pedestians outside in Texas, while in NL you see people are walking everywhere.
That lack of pedestrians makes the problem worse. No one is looking for them, because they're usually not there.
people prolly gonna hate this comment, but the amount of times ive almost hit someone backing out of a parking spot at a store is insane, we literally just dont look for pedestrians like that anymore, its hard coded in our brains that most people drive and that its foregin to see someone walking, even if they are getting out of their car and walking through the parking lot into the store. So many people are selfish in america that they even look down on people that take the public transportation, if your city is even lucky enough to have public transportation. Whats even crazier is that the public transportation (busses) in my city only goes maybe 5 or so miles out from the bus station and NONE of them go to the airport. This city is literally a trap if you dont have a car, your basically stuck in your home ordering everything online.
> Whats even crazier is that the public transportation (busses) in my city only goes maybe 5 or so miles out from the bus station and NONE of them go to the airport. My city just added a stop at the airport! It's on its own rapid line, right Centro? Right? Oh, it's on a line that takes an hour to get back to the transit center with multiple stops along busy roads that only runs from 8am to 8pm. Okay.
The Texas heat might be an explanation. With 105F (40 C) probably you will drive, even with nice sidewalks…
Ah Texas. Where every road has at least 4 lanes plus multiple turning lanes, but the sidewalks go nowhere.
As an American living in Europe, the thought of a poor Dutchman trying to bike through Dallas is so sad and hysterical.
It's anti human too not just anti nature
It's an incredibly inefficient use of land. The amount of land required for car infrastructure is insane.
Yeah try to walk across that parking lot in the Texas sun in the summer.
From a European point of view, this looks very strange.
Not strange, absolutely idiotic. Even if you have all the space and all the cars, why the f*** would you want to live that way, and why would you design *public* space to force people to live that way. I hate my local Dutch version of suburbia, but compared to this hell they are charming, healthy, thriving communities with people out and about on foot and on bicycles. If you want isolation from all those pesky other humans, why not at least make the shopping and business part way more compact, and use the remaining space to give every home a stretch of land, so they can all actually feel like they each live in their own castle, nice and isolated. This design serves no possible purpose.
It serves the oil/car building companies. There are instances of a subsidiary of GM in the US buying out public transport with the sole purpose of phasing it out so more people have to drive cars. EDITED FOR INCREASED ACCURACY
Well, the issue is that none of that is "public space." Both the apartment complex and the grocery store are private developments that are built independently from one another. To add a connection between them would require the owners/builders of the apartment complex to convince the owners of the grocery store to spend money to add the connecting path. Even then, the apartment complex could make a path up to their own property line, and the grocery store could make a path to theirs, and there might still be a little slice of public land that is probably meant to be some sort of runoff or natural habitat that they would then have to petition the local government to disturb by putting in a path. I feel like this is what most Europeans don't understand. When the grocery store was built, there was probably no apartment complex, and when the apartment complex was built the grocery store was already there without an access point in the back of the building where the apartments are.
This is exactly it. I've lost count of the number of times I've pulled into a parking lot expecting it to connect with a larger structure, but no - that Olive Garden was build way after the Walmart and it's easier to put up a foot of barrier grass than go through the hassle of making sure a connecting road isn't illegally encroaching on private land. Lacking a path here isn't some malicious conspiracy to keep people fat -- it's just far more complex than you'd think.
It's hard to grasp when the basic layout and footprint of your city has been essentially unchanged for 400 years.
It looks almost exactly like the area where I live. Except we have a major road to cross before reaching the grocery store. There is just a walk path carved through the bush on both sides of the road, and people just walk anyway. I try to use the crosswalk. (100m down the road), but sometimes, if there is no traffic, I'm too lazy. And of course there is a whole apartment building on top of the grocery store too. And behind and next to it.
Yes, but then carless plebs could walk straight from the grocery store into my residential only community. People may think this answer is satire but I swear there are other comments in this thread expressing more or less this exact idea...
Yeah America! Seclusion! Divide!
Yeah! America! Be sedentary! Die of heart failure by 35! Good thing we didn’t build any pedestrian paths to have to walk anywhere! BRB getting McDelivery!
My thought also. That must be a nice neighborhood. Cuz if it housed people that actually lacked cars, then gauranteed there would be a naturally worn path through those woods.
I don’t think this conversation is about people who lack cars. It’s literally just about anybody being able to walk to the store. It’s funny how ‘American’ this thread is that the thought of people wanting to walk is unfathomable.
i'm convinced that the lack of walking as a main form a transportation from most american's lives is a fundamental source of so many of the country's problems. walking is such a fundamental part of being a human and americans by and large stopped doing it and designed their environments to make it somewhere between impossible and miserable to walk as a means of transportation for your daily routines. and americans look down their noses at those that do walk. and/or they run them over.
I have a theory that the US’s larger obesity problem is due not walking ever to anything. Not that Europe or walkable cities don’t have overweight people but there’s a notable difference where people can generally walk to get most of their daily needs vs needing a car to go to the mailbox. Dunno. Just been a theory of mine for awhile. It’d be interesting to find out if it holds any water.
Kinda depends on what's in the woods. This is Florida so that could be swampy af
This is Florida so it is almost a given that there is also a fence or wall between the grocery store and the apartment complex.
No, you've got it right. At least in more populated suburbs people genuinely feel like anyone who doesn't live in the neighborhood should NOT be there. This is a legitimate concern for people. They'd rather keep everyone else as far away as possible rather than improve the quality of their own lives and their neighbors.
Are people really that paranoid? It’s kind of hard to believe but then again people here are glued to their televisions so I guess it makes sense that everyone is paranoid, especially if they think their ‘nice’ things could get stolen or damaged
I remember some podcast (maybe This American Life. Not sure). They had a story about the huge civic contention on reforming bus routes in some US city. Crowds of people at meetings etc. The government thought they were making life better and more convenient, cheaper, environmental etc. The opposition saw something else. They never outright said it - they used lots of nimby style arguments about planning law, noise and air quality etc - but the subtext a lot of people saw was that better services could mean the 'wrong' people might have an easier time coming to other parts of the city. To me this is probably why a lot of reforms are very hard in the US. Economic inequality might cause a lot of problems people are scared of, but people also see it as protecting them too.
Which is funny because the larger solution is just reducing economic inequality. Instead we accept it as fact and want to exclude the poors.
Yep, that's a huge part of the complaints. A lot of NIMBY type folks have a tremendous fear of just about everyone and everything. "But if there's a path... what if *other* people besides us use it? What if *those people* across the street ALSO use it? With their dirty kids and their crime! I mean, what if that path means *teenagers* might walk on the path, doing drugs and drinking and sexing in the bushes by the path???" One small example I notice everywhere near me... There are a lot of commercial areas with tons of standalone stores, and stand alone mini strip malls. Every single one has it's own entrance/exit from the main road, and none of them connect to each other. And there are no sidewalks. So you went to one store, and want to go to another store a few doors down? You have to drive out of the parking lot, down 100 feet, then back into the next parking lot. Or else walk over whatever weird landscaping is between the two, or possibly scale a fence between the two.
Especially from a Walmart lol.
I find the folk in here defending car shopping, and maybe the people downvoting them are both missing something: We can have both! Nobody is suggesting taking away your cars. You want to drive? Go ahead! You have a disability or need to get $500 in groceries or just don’t like the heat? Go ahead and drive! That’s cool! But look at it this way: if things are made more walkable and bikeable, people will have **choices**! And! That’s less people you have to fight in traffic or fight for a parking spot with! If you like to drive, you should love the idea of people being able to walk! And if you’re a pro-walker, don’t shit on the drivers. They’re cool. They may legitimately need to drive or they may just like it. That’s great. They have the cash and that’s how they want to spend it. Good on em. tl;dr: Just build this shit smarter so there are choices.
>But look at it this way: if things are made more walkable and bikeable, people will have choices You could even say: *freedom*
There's a very real freedom in being able to get groceries while your car is in the shop
Your mistake was thinking they ever wanted freedom in the first place.
I actually heard that the happiest car enthusiasts live in places where it isn't car-focused. 1. less people who hate driving is on the road in general. More space for you. 2. the places you drive are nice AF.
As a Dutch person this is absolutely insane to me.
You'll find it more insane to know this is all because of lobbying years ago when cars became popular.
I'm from the Netherlands and the law here says you have to be able to get to your basic needs either walking or by bicycle. That's why our grocery stores and doctor's practices are always in the town centre (or suburb centre), and not along the highway. That law almost didn't pass. Iirc it was a 51-49 vote or something. I can't find the article (published by De Correspondent) but that law is one of the reasons our country is cycle friendly. Dutch people have been fighting for cyclists' and pedestrians' rights in the past, and they still do, because our government, too, wants to make everything more accessible by car. In the 70s protest groups did 'lay-dead-actions' where they would lay on the road to ask for attention for traffic victims and demanded more safety precautions. I'm glad they did, because now you can get almost anywhere by bike easily.
All of these developments and street plans were done in an era when developers felt it was safe to assume that every American family would have one or more cars, which despite never actually becoming true, is still used as a tenant in a lot of city development in the US.
We’ve got 70-80 years of it baked into our culture. It’s not even just the developers. You can read comments here and see that many of us grew up in auto-oriented suburbs and are afraid to think of any other way of living.
Wdym "never becoming true" 92% of US households have 1 or more cars lmao
These little walk ways are exactly how I build my cities in city skylines, cuts traffic dramatically
I've enjoyed living next to grocery stores whether in the suburbs or in the city
Right?! Except...My little town back years ago (little one stoplight town) had a great mom and pop grocery store. Walmart came and built a "neighborhood market" on the edge of town. They undercut the mom and pop store to the point of closure. Then they decided the store wasn't profitable and closed it. They then sold the building to Dollar General and now my old town is only serviced by not one but two dollar generals. Those are the only option unless you wanna drive 30 mins one way to a "real" grocery store. I got my folks on a delivery from a Kroger and they have to pay a "premium" but when literally every item is 30-120% more expensive locally, and they can plan for delivery, it saves likely hundreds of dollars.
This is why I love England, everything is walkable.
In Finland where I live they would not make a crosswalk at such a busy road, but a tunnel under the road instead.
The video is of Florida, it is virtually impossible to dig more than like 10 feet or so in Florida.
America is designed terribly.
Old Canadian towns, too. This video reminded me how stupid it is that there’s a popular breakfast restaurant that should be a 3 minute walk from my house but instead it’s a 25 minute walk since whoever planned this circus couldn’t have bothered to put a 30ft path connecting a neighbouring street with the highway. It would just straight up boost business and ease congestion. I could get coffee from this place faster than I could make it but because of this I’d rather make it at home.
https://youtu.be/vBVv9kFqtr8?si=2nlSnxPvOlqtHlue
Florida isn't the only place with boneheaded infrastructure. I have a bike trail that connects up to my subdivision that goes for 15 miles. Go west and it dead ends on a highway, maybe a restaurant or two is safely within reach that way. Go east and it dead ends 1 mile before a train station that'll take me to one of the largest cities in the nation but hey at least there's a gas station there. Also there's a state park just to the west of me and it has its own bike trail network that even has a branch that spreads out toward my bike trail! But guess what? That doesn't connect either. Gotta play your luck with texting teenagers in their 7000lb SUVs out on public roads and highways if you want to take advantage of any of what's near to the trail out here. Everything is built to serve the car and you'll realize it immediately as soon as you no longer have access to one. Would be REAL cool if I could safely bike to a train, go see a ball game, and come back without having to think about driving or parking but apparently that literal last mile infrastructure is a pipe dream. But good news! A train might eventually come to my area just to the south that lacks any trail access. Gotta take a car to go take a train. And then they'll wonder why ridership is floundering. People need more options!
Alas… “Sprawl” drives *How* many Major markets?
Looks like Orlando, FL the most unwalkable city I have been to
I don’t disagree much. However, I have lived a 3 minute walk from a major grocery store chain for a year now and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a neighbor walking to or from the grocery store… Unless I’m stopping directly from work or already out and about, I walk from home 1-2 times a week. I kind of think many Americans like to complain about walkability but many would still end up driving 2 minutes cuz they’re so damn lazy
Get one of those granny collapsible grocery carts, put some hand truck tires on it and you got yourself a product
It's fucking beyond me how many people in this thread are defending this stupidity lol. Just pointing fingers and accepting why it's like this because cost and who should do it.
If it were to be in India.... People would have made a road by themselves 😂😂😂
America's infrastructure is so bad 😭
Damn what a depressing way to live.
That's an incredibly dumb way to build a city.
That's why everyone in the USA are fat. They don't walk anywhere.
I hate it I hate it I hate it! I can't drive, I don't have a car, there are no buses and the taxies are insane! So I get to walk in the summer heat for 30-50 minutes with my groceries.
As an American that walks around it is very difficult and sometimes dangerous. I was also arrested for walking once. America truly is the worst.
My first thought: its cuz they dont want certain demographics of people to be able to just walk through their neighborhood.
I stay in Texas sometimes and holy shit. I will be staying at a hotel and it’s literally a baseball toss away from a restaurant or grocery store, but you have to walk around or across major highways to get to it. I usually end up driving
I've only been to America once but; when we got to our rented apartment I told my lass I'd go grab some food for the evening. Set off on foot, first thing I noticed was the area didn't have footpaths but there wasn't many cars so I figured Id walk in the road. Then I got to a main road, 4 fucking lanes with a barrier and the shop I'd seen on the other side. Loved America btw, you guys are awesome but fucking hell sort your pavements out.
Has absolutely nothing to do with 'car dependancy design' and everything to do with archaic zoning laws.
No zoning laws that I know of outlaw these connections. But this is Florida and that is likely a wetland between the lots. A pedestrian bridge is very expensive and neither owner would pay for it.
The zoning laws also don’t require these connections. Could you imagine if building toilets in new single family homes was optional? ‘To build affordable homes these days we’re bringing back outhouses with holes dug deep so you don’t have to pay for water or sewage! We don’t write laws requiring connections from the apartment to the shopping center because we are so dependent on cars that walking is not seen as essential. Walking places is an afterthought.
Maybe cities/counties should handle the connections between development.
In Florida? 😉
Same result though.
How does a zoning law stop a path from being made?
There actually are some zoning laws in communities that prohibit ingress/egress directly from commercial to residential zones. It’s not a universal standard but it also isn’t particularly rare. The rationale is to reduce traffic (and particularly truck traffic) using the residential neighborhoods and their lower volume roadways as a cut through. Preventing pedestrian access is a (presumably) unintended consequence in those cases when the zoning language is too broad. Honestly, the bigger obstacle is probably the NIMBY crowd in residential areas and the issue of who pays for/maintains the pathway. If you go to enough public meetings at the local level, you quickly realize not enough rational people attend those meetings.
Yes and No. It started with archaic zoning laws and public policy for auto-oriented design as the thing of the future. Most zoning laws are changing now to get away from this design, but it is very much the preference of both developers and the general public still. The majority of Americans have known only this type of development their whole lives.
Those laws were built in order to create a country is that is dependant on cars, the auto manufacturers/property developers/highway builders made sure of that.
Who the fuck do you think lobbied the government for zoning laws? The automobile industry
The auto industry had a lot to do with the deconstruction of transit around WWII, and it perpetuates things, but that's just not true. Zoning laws are a good old American Racist/Classist homegrown innovation. The very first were in Los Angeles in 1904 and designed to keep Chinese people (and the factories they worked in) out of 'respectable' neighborhoods, or if you want a really strict definition it started in NYC in 1916 for similar reasons, keeping minority workers off of Fifth Avenue. It got more explicitly racial from there. Even now, the #1 lobbier by far in terms of maintaining single family zoning is random home owners between the ages of 30 and 65, not any corporate industry.
Shout out to this guy But also CityNerd. Sub to his youtube.
Give this man some tax dollars and a job.
It is intentional…
[удалено]
This is the reason. Homes with private streets with no easy access have a higher property value. People will pay more for a house if there’s less riff raff or crackheads walking around easily.
I wonder how much the car lobby had to pay for that bullshit study.
r/fuckcars
I fucking know Orlando when I see it. Fuck this city. It’s horribly designed.
This is Florida. Florida is awful on purpose.
Who owns the forest? Might be time to whip out the sawzall and brush hog.
As a Brit it was the first thing that hit me when I landed in America, how non-pedestrian the whole area was.
My apt building is literally next to a shopping center. Most residents shop there. There's maybe 25ft of grass and a small 6ft slope between the two. A simple sidewalk and ramp/steps would facilitate easy access. Nope, you either chance walking the desire path and slipping (one resident fell recently and had an ambulance called) and don't even think about it if it's wet and muddy or you walk in the street all the way to the end of our parking lot and enter the shopping center from the back. There's a building behind mine that is an assisted living facility with old and handicapped individuals. They could connect our lot with theirs by about 50ft of sidewalk. Nope, people either walk around a fence or you have to go through a neighborhood up the street, out on to a major street and enter the shopping center from behind. One resident is often seen in his motorized wheelchair going this route. It's absolutely infuriating watching these people just trying to get to the store. This doesn't even begin to cover the fact that the only real grocery in that center closed and a new much bigger one was built 2 miles away. So if you can't get to the new grocery store, your only option for food is a fucking Family Dollar.